Can you build successfully without knowing LSL?

It seems to me if you have no knowledge of scripting your building ability will be severely limited after a time, as mine is. The scripts from the library or those you can buy will handle normal situations like doors, windows, lights, and vehicles, but are no good for oddball stuff.

I have no doubt I could learn LSL given enough time. I learned a little bit of C+ over 20 years ago, but I had time then. The days get very short as you get older.

So I'm wondering how the prolific builders out there handle the scripting problem. Did you just bite the bullet and go to a scripting class or tutorial? If so how long did this take and was it worth it?

Or do you farm it out? If so, how do you get a script wizard interested in your boring simple little script to make a sphere shrink and grow along the Y axis at random sizes and at randomly very slow speeds, for instance. I have never had any luck getting a response from people advertising themselves as script writers. I guess my little projects aren't epic enough.

Maybe the really good creations are a more of team effort. Your thoughts?

Compared to any real language lsl is pretty simple.

Especially the sort of things it sounds like you want to script. Spend five minutes going through the tutorials here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal

All you really need to do is memorize the functions. you can do an amazing amount of things by just sticking one or two functions into the default Hello World script.

Very possible. I know a Master Jeweler (she builds other items as well) and a scripting genius who paired up for this specific reason. The scripter gets a percentage of each sale.

Anything I make that involves scripts utilizes scripts I obtain in classes I take and are usually fairly basic. Initially I thought that if scripts were given out in classes it was assumed they could be used for objects to sell. Some teachers would even say that during class. The last classes I've been to now make it very clear if scripts, textures, etc. are permitted to be used outside of class and under what conditions or if they are only for class demo purposes.

Last year I was selling an item that had a script in it that I obtained in a class. After becoming a bit more savvy on the above, I started going through all my scripts and carefully reading the comment conditions. Unfortunately, one stated it was ONLY to be used for a class demo, which led me to contacting the scripter who is the man I mentioned that scripts for the jeweler and who told me about the partnership system they have.

If I built anything that would warrant more than very basic scripting, I would personally go that route.

ETA: This site was recommended in a Torley video - an automatic self-scripting site. I don't have the Torley vid bookmarked, but the site is: http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/

Probably still very basic, but another way to look at the script that it produces and start figuring out how scripts work.

Certainly you will need some scripting ability to add functionality to a build. Doors, windows and lighting are the obvious things to begin with but I find there's always something that needs that extra feature only a snippet of LSL will provide. I have no basic nous at all when it comes to scripting but I have managed to get some things together with a good deal of cut and paste, trial and error, sheer brain pain and a lot of help from the scripting forums.

Void Singer was putting together a comprehensive package of scripts for builders not so long ago. She seems to be on hiatus from the forums lately but it might just be worth your while to drop her an IM in-world and see if she has that ready for sale. It could save you a lot of trouble and torment in the long run.

But of course there is nothing quite like biting the bullet and seeing what you can do for yourself first.

You don't need to know how to script to build, you can get scripted builders packages around the place. Obviously if you can script you can save not only money but maybe develop systems more unique to yourself, which will always be a bonus.

It's not the size of any one project, it's *how many* projects one builder will generate. Customization of existing scripts is the bread and butter of a scripter's income, and many customizations are trivial. When a scripter takes a new client on, they have to be very careful to work through specifications and pricing/support expectations - personally, I write them down, exactly as I do in RL when doing contract work. So, a good scripter will really want to establish a relationship with a few prolific builders, so they can get past the need for such formality and communications overhead.

I pretty much write my own scripts for my builds, but I mainly build houses, so there's not a lot to script. I wrote my own light and remote lightswitch scripts, door chime scripts, and windowblinds script. For simple things like doors, I see no point in re-inventing the wheel, as there are a number of good open-source scripts out there for that.

I pretty much taught myself everything I know about LSL by reading through the LSL Wiki, dissecting other scripts to see how they worked, and through experimentation. However, I do have some prior programming experience, so the concept wasn't completely foreign to me. My best advice for learning LSL is to take some time and experiment with the vast collection of open-source scripts out there, referencing the LSL wiki for structure, flow, and syntax. Taking a Java (or any other current object-oriented language) course would help as well.

? But LSL is not object-oriented. Wouldn't a course in PERL (another simple scripting language) be more helpful?

For most LSL learners, the tricky things are:

-- It's event-driven
-- Its state handling is a little odd
-- RAM is extremely constrained
-- Lagerific scripts are easy to write; efficient ones less so

edit: oh, and:

-- scripts retain their run state when they are taken into inventory, and on rezzing only re-initialize if the scripter has explicitly set that up

Building is a much more useful skill to have on its own than scripting.

Thanks for the good answers. I'm biting the bullet and trying to learn it again, or at least enough of it to plug in and modify modules that are already written. Can't seem to get much past the "Hello Avatar" stage before I get interrupted or sometimes even fall asleep.

But its good as a brain exercise even if there isn't much progress.

/me picks a nit and argues that you don't really need to memorize the functions. Going through them to get an idea of what can be done, even if you don't always remember the details of how to do it, is a better first step.

You will be very welcome over at /54/1.html, which is where I learned how to script.

I came to scripting from building, because I was tired of paying for stuff that didn't work, or not the way I wanted it to. I had a look at various free scripts but decided that I was just confusing myself; none of what I wanted script (at least initially) was too complicated -- change transparencies, textures, make doors open and shut and so on -- so I thought I might as well start from scratch as try to deduce from other people's scripts how it works. When I knew enough to understand how lsl works, then I started to benefit from other's scripts because I could understand what they were doing.

I do most of my work collaboratively; my business partner is an animator and good with textures and sculpties. We're both competent builders, and I'm by now quite an experienced scripter. We like the same sort of stuff, and have great fun coming up with ideas and running with them together.

Very true!

Weston: If you did some C, then the only problems you'll have with LSL are knowing what functions are built into it. The best place for them is at http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage

It's a really nice site to just browse and see what functions there are. It also has a script library.

Early on, just shortly after learning to build, I started dissecting, cutting and pasting with freebie scripts. Called myself a Frankenstein scripter, LOL. I got things to work, and I learned more about the language as time went on. Once I understood things better, it became as fun as building (almost, though more frustrating at times), and it opened up more building opportunities because "seeing" the build was no longer just the structure, but also the function. Many times a new project would force me to learn a new set of commands and functions. I was fortunate in that I had a friend who was a real scripter who would help, but I would only bug him when I truly became stuck. Eventually, I did not really need to bug him anymore at all. I whole-heartedly advise to jump in and learn. Learning keeps your mind young after all...

A team would work best, although both parties need to have a basic knowlege of the other party's work so they can work together and know what is possible and what is the best way to do something.
I get by with average building skills and beginners scripting I guess, but I'm not up in the leauge of top content creators by any means.

Weston, Weston, Weston, sometimes I shake my head.
What the f**k is LSL and C+? Days get short? For goodness sake man! Snap out of it!
Go and play instead of whittling away your time.

But - but I thought scripting IS play. What would you suggest?

Would you feel better if I told you I have a lady friend visiting tomorrow (actually today at this late hour) and we're going to read poetry and, if feeling ambitious, work on a painting collaboration? Wait, I guess that doesn't sound very exciting either, but it is to us.

Loosening up to the level of the wilder party days I had before middle age would probably require more Glenmorangie than I can afford to waste.

When I need a script I go to someone who knows how to do it - when I need an anim - same thing -

I wd love to be able to do these things but they are not part of my skill set -

I am however, damn lucky at finding people that know how to do what I want - so I pay them to do it and they make a few bux and i am not frustrated and i build stuffs - all good

/me pets puppy..

I'm not such a fan of the team approach, specifically for building and scripting. And I'm *really* not a fan of using pre-packaged scripts for builders.

The problem with teaming is that the interaction generally goes:
. Builder: "I have this build, and I need a script to do X."
. Scripter: "Here's a script that does X."
Or sometimes:
. Builder: "I have this build, and I need a script to do Y."
. Scripter: "There is no way for a script to do Y. But if you change your build, it could do Z."

This isn't just about efficiency, but rather about optimal design: If one person understands both scripting and building, they'll get better ideas about what to build and script. It's not entirely necessary that one person actually make the final prims and write the final scripts, but for the scripting, knowing the detailed "gotchas" buried in LSL limitations comes with having written more than a few scripts.

There are two problems with pre-packaged scripts, even if there's a perfect match between what the script does and what the build really needs. First, unless you're very lucky, the script is going to be crap. Most scripts for builders are almost incredibly bad, either because they're just badly written (inefficient or buggy), or because they're trying to be general enough to be reused in lots of builds--resulting in code and memory bloat, overly intricate configuration, and/or unnecessarily complex interactions with users.

The second problem with pre-packaged scripts is that they're most useful when they provide one functionality: lighting, for example, or privacy windows, or TV, or radio, etc. That sounds good: make everything modular, right? The downside is that it's inefficient use of sim resources (memory and scheduler) to have lots of scripts running at the same time--even if they're not doing anything. So it's a win to combine more functions into fewer scripts. That's a lot easier to achieve by starting with a clean slate than by trying to cobble together pre-packaged scripts, even if you're able to smash their source together into a single script.

(Note that custom scripters, too, need to consider whether code re-use is really good for their clients.)

Not knowing scripting never stopped anyone from building. Heck for that matter it is obvious not knowing scripting ever stopped anyone from scripting. The 0.5 millisecond resizer script in shoes, dresses, shoulder puffs, and hair amply demos that effect.

I have built my own home, most of the stuff in it, many other structures and quite a few attachments like jewellery, shoes, and I don't know how to script at all. I know how to use existing scripts and how to make some allowable alterations to full-perms scripts, but that's about all.

It's a question that most builders will come across at some time I reckon.
My first was "These doors don't do what I want".

I did get one "Scripter" to start making a system for me but after the first draft and 8K later, it was not going to do what I wanted. so..

It's taken me well over a year to learn enough to implement my own building control system that all works together. In the mean time I built very little spending countless hours learning scripting. My early efforts are bad in comparison to recent. And, I'm still tweaking as I go but It's mostly simple syntax errors now, not really "WTF" moments/days, although they do crop up. I had some bad "WTF" weeks too.

Now I am starting to re-build everything to include this new system. The learning is paying off (well, not in Lindens anyway) and my builds are now very functional, do what I want and as Qie mentioned, there is no "One size fits all" so every build/script must be customised to some degree.

But best of all is, every part of my builds now, from custom Mega prim sizes I made when the hole was open, to the scripting, animations, textures and all, is my "Creation". If it doesn't, I remove it.

Although one CAN build successfully without scripting knowledge, it certainly helps to make the build do what YOU want, rather than what a freebie script is limited to. Unless, of course, the build doesn't need scripting.

True, LSL is not an object-oriented language, but it does share much of the same structure. When I took my Intro to Java class last year as part of my IT curriculum, I noted how strikingly similar both the languages were. If you learn Java, LSL should be easy to pick up.

Edit: I'm not familiar with PERL, so I can't compare the two. I'm familiar with Python, but Python is OO, and does not closely resemble Java or LSL. I suppose a better comparison can be made between LSL and C.

This. Although some people say it's not that hard to learn lsl, they are usually the same people who either knew a programming language already or it comes easier to them (left-brain/right-brain thing). For example, I was never that great at math & science in school but I won awards for my writing and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE public speaking, which is one of many people's greatest fears. We're all different.

I can learn almost anything if I set my mind to it but time is limited. I took several lsl scripting classes, one by an extremely talented scripter, and by the third lesson I needed duct tape to keep my head from exploding.

So, I'd rather spend my time doing what I DO enjoy and do well. A lot of my items don't require scripting, the ones that do are fairly simple scripting that I can do...and if I get more complicated in the future...I'll hire someone.

/me waves to Amar

Sorry!
You shouldn't be drinking - try and curb that desire. It's unnatural to get drunk on Single Malt anyway; get sloshed on the cheap brands.
I still dunno what LSL is.